A crisis is a bad thing to waste, Rahm Emanuel told him, but this is the second one in succession Obama has failed to finesse. With his first one -- the financial collapse that got him elected -- he tried to leverage it into a mammoth expansion of government, that led in turn to a mammoth resistance, to the rise of a new class of conservative heroes, and to a mammoth defeat in the House.
With the second -- the tsunami of debt rolling toward the country -- he is pretending it doesn't exist. In his State of the Union, he proposed still more spending, all on nonessentials.
Thirty-five minutes later, he (briefly) mentioned the deficit. Sensible liberal Ruth Marcus called it "a disturbing vacuum of leadership." Worse, she said, he undercut efforts by senators from both parties to rein in expenses.
"The State of the Union gave Obama the opportunity to confront the contradictions and educate Americans in the unpleasant realities of uncontrolled government," said Robert Samuelson. "He declined." Men of destiny try to pre-empt crises, not allow them to fester.
It was as if FDR gave a speech in 1940 on foreign affairs, and ignored Nazi Germany while he touted our friendly relations with Canada. This is not the way men of destiny act.
Obama is not transformational, and he will not be great. If he goes on like this, he will not even be adequate, but will go down in history as one of the soi-disant leaders who not only failed to master a crisis, but failed to admit one existed.
Indeed
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/02/obamas-moment-passes-him#ixzz1CvHfYpS5
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